Tax Day isn’t usually cause for celebration. The annual due date for filing taxes usually comes with headache-inducing financial stress and mountains of difficult-to-decipher paperwork. But this year, Tax Day apparently came with an unexpected upside for some New Yorkers, thanks to an announcement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” Mamdani said in a video posted to social media on April 15. “Today, we’re taxing the rich.”
Mamdani went on to say he had secured a new pied-á-terre tax, or second home tax, a first for the state of New York. The tax would incur an annual fee on residential properties worth more than $5 million in New York City—provided that their owners don’t live in the city full-time.
“This pied-á-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don’t actually live here,” Mamdani explained. “But even so, they’re able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.”
Mamdani specifically called out billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, whose $238 million penthouse served as the backdrop for the mayor’s video. Griffin’s purchase of the penthouse in 2019 was the most expensive residential sale in United States history, inciting a proposal for a pied-á-terre tax that was swiftly killed in the New York Senate. This time around, though, the tax might just have staying power.
“Most of the time, these units are sitting empty since, again, they don’t actually live here,” Mamdani said. “This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers. Now, it’s coming to an end.”
Mamdani said he expects the tax to raise $500 million annually directly for the city, which he’d put toward efforts like “free childcare, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods.”
“As mayor, I believe everyone has a role to play in contributing to our city—and some, a little bit more than others,” he concluded. “Happy Tax Day, New York.”
A collaboration with Governor Hochul
Though Mamdani is an avid supporter of the pied-á-terre tax, it’s Governor Kathy Hochul who will formally propose it and include it in the state’s annual budget.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world, and the people who call it home should not be left carrying the burden alone,” Hochul said in a statement on April 14. “If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker.”
Hochul’s move of including the tax in the state budget, rather than proposing it as a standalone bill that would be voted on separately, makes it much more likely to succeed. In her own video posted to social media on Tax Day, Hochul called the tax a “common-sense surcharge.”
“They’re part of our skyline, but those people are not part of our city,” she said. “This proposal simply ensures that they’re contributing in a meaningful way to keeping New York City the greatest city in the world.”
“We will be taxing the ultra-wealthy and global elites,” Mamdani added in response to Hochul’s post.
Social media celebrates Mamdani’s announcement
Politicians making good on their campaign promises (let alone so soon after election) is all too rare in America, so a move like Mamdani’s caught attention online from New Yorkers and out-of-town fans alike.
The tax is being viewed as another point supporting Mamdani’s reputation as a rare politician making tangible changes for his constituents. “100 days before Mamdani was Mayor all we heard was taxing the rich like this was impossible,” one user reflected. “This is a great beginning.”
“What a novelty to deliver on a campaign promise,” wrote another user in a post praising Mamdani’s follow-through.
Just days ago, Mamdani announced the first site the city had selected for its slate of city-owned grocery stores, La Marqueta in East Harlem, which is expected to open by 2029. The first of Mamdani’s municipal grocery stores is set to open in late 2027, with plans in place for one city-owned grocery store in each borough before the end of Mamdani’s current term as mayor.
The slate of grocery stores, too, was a campaign promise that Mamdani’s critics decried as far-fetched during his campaign. Combined with the pied-á-terre tax, his supporters say that Mamdani is proving political progress doesn’t have to move at a snail’s pace.
And to any who’d find the tax unfair, some users pointed out that there’s an easy way around it for rich property owners: actually occupying the residences they’ve shelled out millions for.
“The cool thing about this policy is that there is a very easy way for the rich to avoid it: they can simply live in NYC full time,” one viral post put it. “Instead of incentivizing the rich to leave New York it incentivizes them to *stay* in New York.”